Giving a glimpse of the essential science of economics, this book tells the story of what has come to be called the new growth theory: the paradox identified by Adam Smith, its disappearance and occasional resurfacing in the 19th century, and the development of various technical tools in the 20th century.

    Today, the Fed is the bedrock of the financial landscape, yet the fight to create it was so protracted and divisive that it seems a small miracle that it was ever established. For nearly a century, America, alone among developed nations, refused to consider any central or organizing agency in its financial system. Americans’ mistrust of big government and of big banks—a legacy of the country’s Jeffersonian, small-government traditions—was so widespread that modernizing reform was deemed impossible. Each bank was left to stand on its own, with no central reserve or lender of last resort. The real-world consequences of this chaotic and provincial system were frequent financial panics, bank runs, money shortages, and depressions. By the first decade of the twentieth century, it had become plain that the outmoded banking system was ill equipped to finance America’s burgeoning industry. But political will for reform was lacking. It took an economic meltdown, a high-level tour of Europe, and—improbably—a conspiratorial effort by vilified captains of Wall Street to overcome popular resistance. Finally, in 1913, Congress conceived a federalist and quintessentially American solution to the conflict that had divided bankers, farmers, populists, and ordinary Americans, and enacted the landmark Federal Reserve Act.Roger Lowenstein—acclaimed financial journalist and bestselling author of When Genius Failed and The End of Wall Street—tells the drama-laden story of how America created the Federal Reserve, thereby taking its first steps onto the world stage as a global financial power. America’s Bank showcases Lowenstein at his very finest: illuminating complex financial and political issues with striking clarity, infusing the debates of our past with all the gripping immediacy of today, and painting unforgettable portraits of Gilded Age bankers, presidents, and politicians.Lowenstein focuses on the four men at the heart of the struggle to create the Federal Reserve. These were Paul Warburg, a refined, German-born financier, recently relocated to New York, who was horrified by the primitive condition of America’s finances; Rhode Island’s Nelson W. Aldrich, the reigning power broker in the U.S. Senate and an archetypal Gilded Age legislator; Carter Glass, the ambitious, if then little-known, Virginia congressman who chaired the House Banking Committee at a crucial moment of political transition; and President Woodrow Wilson, the academician-turned-progressive-politician who forced Glass to reconcile his deep-seated differences with bankers and accept the principle (anathema to southern Democrats) of federal control. Weaving together a raucous era in American politics with a storied financial crisis and intrigue at the highest levels of Washington and Wall Street, Lowenstein brings the beginnings of one of the country’s most crucial institutions to vivid and unforgettable life. Readers of this gripping historical narrative will wonder whether they’re reading about one hundred years ago or the still-seething conflicts that mark our discussions of banking and politics today.

    Douglas Murray takes a step back and explores the deeper issues behind the continent's possible demise, from an atmosphere of mass terror attacks and a global refugee crisis to the steady erosion of our freedoms. He addresses the disappointing failure of multiculturalism, Angela Merkel’s U-turn on migration, and the Western fixation on guilt. Murray travels to Berlin, Paris, Scandinavia, and Greece to uncover the malaise at the very heart of the European culture, and to hear the stories of those who have arrived in Europe from far away.Declining birth rates, mass immigration, and cultivated self-distrust and self-hatred have come together to make Europeans unable to argue for themselves and incapable of resisting their own comprehensive alteration as a society and an eventual end. This sharp and incisive book ends up with two visions for a new Europe--one hopeful, one pessimistic--which paint a picture of Europe in crisis and offer a choice as to what, if anything, we can do next. But perhaps Spengler was right: "civilizations like humans are born, briefly flourish, decay, and die."

    Rather, they are symptoms of a much deeper malaise which can be traced all the way back to the Great Crash of 1929, then on through to the 1970s: the time when a ‘Global Minotaur’ was born. Just as the Athenians maintained a steady flow of tributes to the Cretan beast, so the ‘rest of the world’ began sending incredible amounts of capital to America and Wall Street. Thus, the Global Minotaur became the ‘engine’ that pulled the world economy from the early 1980s to 2008.Today’s crisis in Europe, the heated debates about austerity versus further fiscal stimuli in the US, the clash between China’s authorities and the Obama administration on exchange rates are the inevitable symptoms of the weakening Minotaur; of a global ‘system’ which is now as unsustainable as it is imbalanced. Going beyond this, Varoufakis lays out the options available to us for reintroducing a modicum of reason into a highly irrational global economic order.An essential account of the socio-economic events and hidden histories that have shaped the world as we now know it.

    At a time when South Africa was a place inhabited by the toughest of men, only those who lived in the saddle with a gun in their hands could possibly survive. Inside you will read about... ✓ The Creation of the Boer ✓ Growing Tensions ✓ Colley Steps In ✓ The End of the First War ✓ The Jameson Raid ✓ Stage One: The Boer Offensive ✓ Stage Two: The Empire Strikes Back ✓ Stage Three: Scorched Earth ✓ The End of the Boer Who were the Boers, and what was the conflict that would lead them into a fight to the death with England in the First and Second Anglo-Boer wars? Was this a colonial uprising? Or a freedom-fight gone horribly wrong?

    An economic historian of international reputation, Carlo M. Cipolla explores the process that made this transformation possible. In so doing, he sheds light not only on the economic factors but on the culture surrounding them.

    Perhaps most surprisingly, Pomeranz demonstrates that the Chinese and Japanese cores were no worse off ecologically than Western Europe. Core areas throughout the eighteenth-century Old World faced comparable local shortages of land-intensive products, shortages that were only partly resolved by trade.Pomeranz argues that Europe's nineteenth-century divergence from the Old World owes much to the fortunate location of coal, which substituted for timber. This made Europe's failure to use its land intensively much less of a problem, while allowing growth in energy-intensive industries. Another crucial difference that he notes has to do with trade. Fortuitous global conjunctures made the Americas a greater source of needed primary products for Europe than any Asian periphery. This allowed Northwest Europe to grow dramatically in population, specialize further in manufactures, and remove labor from the land, using increased imports rather than maximizing yields. Together, coal and the New World allowed Europe to grow along resource-intensive, labor-saving paths.Meanwhile, Asia hit a cul-de-sac. Although the East Asian hinterlands boomed after 1750, both in population and in manufacturing, this growth prevented these peripheral regions from exporting vital resources to the cloth-producing Yangzi Delta. As a result, growth in the core of East Asia's economy essentially stopped, and what growth did exist was forced along labor-intensive, resource-saving paths--paths Europe could have been forced down, too, had it not been for favorable resource stocks from underground and overseas.

    In this seventh edition, Robert L. Heilbroner provides a new theme that connects thinkers as diverse as Adam Smith and Karl Marx. The theme is the common focus of their highly varied ideas—namely, the search to understand how a capitalist society works. It is a focus never more needed than in this age of confusing economic headlines.In a bold new concluding chapter entitled “The End of the Worldly Philosophy?” Heilbroner reminds us that the word “end” refers to both the purpose and limits of economics. This chapter conveys a concern that today’s increasingly “scientific” economics may overlook fundamental social and political issues that are central to economics. Thus, unlike its predecessors, this new edition provides not just an indispensable illumination of our past but a call to action for our future. (amazon.com)

    Only billionaire J.P. Morgan was able to save the stock market.Black Tuesday (1929): As the newly created Federal Reserve System repeatedly adjusted interest rates in all the wrong ways, investment trusts, the darlings of that decade, became the catalyst that caused the bubble to burst, and the Dow fell dramatically, leading swiftly to the Great Depression.Black Monday (1987): When "portfolio insurance," a new tool meant to protect investments, instead led to increased losses, and corporate raiders drove stock prices above their real values, the Dow dropped an astonishing 22.6 percent in one day.The Great Recession (2008): As homeowners began defaulting on mortgages, investment portfolios that contained them collapsed, bringing the nation's largest banks, much of the economy, and the stock market down with them.The Flash Crash (2010): When one investment manager, using a runaway computer algorithm that was dangerously unstable and poorly understood, reacted to the economic turmoil in Greece, the stock market took an unprecedentedly sudden plunge, with the Dow shedding 998.5 points (roughly a trillion dollars in valuation) in just minutes.The stories behind the great crashes are filled with drama, human foibles, and heroic rescues. Taken together they tell the larger story of a nation reaching enormous heights of financial power while experiencing precipitous dips that alter and reset a market where millions of Americans invest their savings, and on which they depend for their futures. Scott Nations vividly shows how each of these major crashes played a role in America's political and cultural fabric, each providing painful lessons that have strengthened us and helped us to build the nation we know today.A History of the United States in Five Crashes clearly and compellingly illustrates the connections between these major financial collapses and examines the solid, clear-cut lessons they offer for preventing the next one.

    A complete history of efforts to understand the subject of economics from ancient Greece to the present, this book is an important contribution to the history of ideas as well as to economics. Although never fully completed, it has gained recognition as a modern classic due to its broad scope and original examination of significant historical events. Complete with a new introduction by Mark Perlman, who outlines the structure of the book and puts Schumpeters work into current perspective, History of Economic Analysis remains a reflection of Schumpeters diverse interests in history, philosophy, sociology, and psychology. Major topics include the techniques of economic analysis, contemporaneous developments in other sciences, and the sociology of economics; economic writings from Plato and Aristotle up through the time of Adam Smith, including the medieval scholastics and natural-law philosophers; the work of Malthus, Mill, Ricardo, Marx, and the important European economists; the history, sociology, psychology, and economics of the period 1879-1914; and modern economic developments. Schumpeter perceived economics as a human science, and this lucid and insightful volume reflects that perception, creating a work that is of major importance to the history of economics.

    A History of Ireland explores the story of Ireland from the 12th century to the end of the 20th century. Written chronologically, it explores the period of the English invasion of Ireland, the emergence of a Gaelic culture, the religious conflicts across the centuries, the struggle over Home Rule, and the complex nature of the modern troubles. Covering the main political narratives of the country, A History of Ireland also delves into major economic, social, and cultural events, and offers a fascinating glimpse into Ireland’s past.

     Today Lipton means tea. However, in his time Sir Thomas Lipton was known for much more. Raised in desperate poverty, he became rich beyond his wildest dreams. He built a global empire of markets, factories, plantations, and stockyards. And his colorful pursuit of the America's Cup trophy made him a beloved figure on both sides of the Atlantic. In A Full Cup, Michael D'Antonio tells the tale of this larger- than-life figure. Beginning with a journey across the United States just after the Civil War, Thomas J. Lipton developed the ambition and learned the business techniques that helped him create the first chain of grocery stores. Wealthy before the age of thirty, he set his sights on the tea trade, and soon his name became synonymous with his product. Lipton's great business success makes for a compelling story of innovation and achievement. Moreover, though, Lipton's most intriguing creation was a public persona-one of the first formed with the help of a modern mass media-that appealed to millions of ordinary people, as well as the elites in America and Europe. Concocting simple stunts like elephant parades, Lipton mastered the new art of obtaining free publicity. With shameless self-promotion, he became one of the world's most eligible bachelors, a patron of the poor, and ultimately reached legendary heights when he revived the competition for the America's Cup. With one losing attempt after another, the gallant Lipton, who didn't even know how to sail his own yacht, became ever more popular. D'Antonio's biography brings to vivid life this remarkable figure.

     The only book to tell the story of Madoff's scam and the SEC's failings by those who saw both first hand Describes how Madoff was enabled by investors and fiduciaries alike Discusses how the SEC missed the red flags raised by Markopolos Despite repeated written and verbal warnings to the SEC by Harry Markopolos, Bernie Madoff was allowed to continue his operations. No One Would Listen paints a vivid portrait of Markopolos and his determined team of financial sleuths, and what impact Madoff's scam will have on financial markets and regulation for decades to come.

    A concentration of power, whether in the hands of a military dictator or a JP Morgan, was understood as autocratic and dangerous to individual liberty and democracy. This idea stretched back to the country’s founding. In the 1930s, people observed that the Great Depression was caused by financial concentration in the hands of a few whose misuse of their power induced a financial collapse. They drew on this tradition to craft the New Deal. In Goliath, Matt Stoller explains how authoritarianism and populism have returned to American politics for the first time in eighty years, as the outcome of the 2016 election shook our faith in democratic institutions. It has brought to the fore dangerous forces that many modern Americans never even knew existed. Today’s bitter recriminations and panic represent more than just fear of the future, they reflect a basic confusion about what is happening and the historical backstory that brought us to this moment. The true effects of populism, a shrinking middle class, and concentrated financial wealth are only just beginning to manifest themselves under the current administrations. The lessons of Stoller’s study will only grow more relevant as time passes. Building upon his viral article in The Atlantic, “How the Democrats Killed Their Populist Soul,” Stoller illustrates in rich detail how we arrived at this tenuous moment, and the steps we must take to create a new democracy.

    Disenchantment with the market economy hasreached the point that many even question capitalism itself.Allan H. Meltzer disagrees, passionately and persuasively. Drawing on deep expertise as a financial historian and authority on economic theory, he provides a resounding answer to the question, why capitalism? Only capitalism, he writes, maximizes both growth and individual freedom. Unlikesocialism, capitalism is adaptive, not rigid--private ownership of the means of production flourishes wherever it takes root, regardless of culture. Laws intended to tamper with its fundamental dynamics, such as those that redistribute wealth, fail. European countries boasting extensive welfareprograms have not surpassed the more market-oriented United States. Capitalism does require a strong legal framework, Meltzer writes, and it does not solve all problems efficiently. But he finds that its problems stem from universal human weaknesses--such as dishonesty, venality, andexpediency--which are not specific to capitalism. Along the way, he systematically analyzes the role of government, positing that regulations are static, but markets are dynamic, usually seeking ways to skirt the rules. Regulation is socially useful if it brings private costs into line with socialcosts (for example, the cost of taxes to hire policemen compared to that of the impact of rampant crime); if it doesn't, regulation simply invites circumvention.Vigorously argued, sweeping in scope, Why Capitalism? reminds us of the fundamental vitality of the one economic system that has survived every challenge, and risen to dominate the globe.